(i wrote this back in june and came across it, and thought it’d be worth posting here.)

Freedom: dependence, arduousness, fearlessness

I’ve learned some things. And I have written/blogged in awhile. But my brain is moving, so here it is. And because I like being challenged and hearing peoples’ thoughts, I’m sharing this with you.

2 Cor 3:17 – “where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom”. Note that it DOESN’T say “where the spirit of the Lord is there is…

religion
morality
perfection
right and wrong
everyone toeing the line
condemnation
goodie two-shoes
republicans
democrats

but FREEDOM.

I choose to live in freedom and not fear. I don’t pretend to think that this will be easy, or that people will understand. But I don’t choose to live my life based on the expectations of people who live in fear of being struck down or losing their ticket into heaven. I choose to live my life in the freedom given me by Jesus’ life on this earth. I don’t pretend to think that this looks the same for every person. I don’t think that you have to believe what I believe to experience the freedom I experience. I believe we put God in a box way too often with what WE think he wants.

Do we REALLY understand what freedom is? That freedom can mean walking boldly in a gray area? That by definition it actually DOESN’T mean subscribing to a particular set of rules set up by a particular person or group of people (read: not Jesus)? I have never felt so imprisoned as I did when I walked in religion and rules and not in the freedom that Christ actually came to bring.

This past Sunday’s message was perhaps one of the most challenging and needed messages I’ve heard in a long time. If you’ve grown up in a church, or even if you haven’t, there’s a fresh, freeing thought process here. I’ve been realizing that I’m imprisoned by my fear of what other people think of me and the decisions I make or don’t make, especially if my viewpoints are different than theirs. I want to be free from that bondage. I’m VERY curious to see what life would be like on the other side of that!

John 10:10 says he came so that we can have life to the full.

I could write a lot more, but instead, I’m encouraging you to take 34 minutes of your life and watch this video. (I know, that means asking you to sacrifice a sitcom, but it’s worth it. ) When you finish (b/c if you don’t you’re missing a lot), I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Let’s have some good dialogue. What does freedom in Christ mean to you? (And I’m going to challenge you to say something more than the typical “good Christian” response. ) Perhaps one of you will help free someone else, or start them on a journey to a greater understanding of freedom.

http://www.crossroads.net/downloads/playVideo.php&idMedia=887

Got the following from a video done at my church, which may be the best expression of a church’s “mission” or credo I’ve ever heard.  If I can find the video that went with it I’ll post it or the link at the bottom.

This was done during a series on the context of what we do and why we do it.

the world is going soft and we are not going with it

we’re going the way of God, no matter which way the rest of the world is going

we’re not the church of tomorrow, we’re the church of today

we are growing, we are moving forward

we are not going back to ritual or tradition

we are about the Bible, it isn’t negotiable or for the faint of heart-

it’s a revolutionary message that changes lives

we’re going to receive truth, speak truth, act on truth

whether it’s in line with popular opinion or not

we are equal opportunity offenders

we aren’t satisfied with mediocrity

God has given us his best, and we give him ours

we are doing life together – we are real no matter how messy it gets

some people hide their dirty laundry – we air ours

because being real brings freedom

we’re not just bothered by poverty, injustice, and oppression – we HATE them

we are not satisfied with the way things are, so we’re changing them

we’re bucking the system that is built to smash people like bugs on a windshield

our system is Love

we’re into coffee – 350 gallons a week – and it isn’t for sale.  nothing is

we give freely and we receive freely

we’re for freedom and we’re against religion

we ARE going to change the world

we’re not about fat savings accounts; we put our money where our mouth is

we spend every dime on blessing communities, building into families, and breaking the bondage of poverty

we’re not taking ourselves too seriously – we still laugh at the same jokes we thought were funny in junior high

we are movie goers, sports fan, and music lovers.  we think God is too.  we don’t check our culture at the door.

we’re doing everything short of sin to communicate, provoke, and connect you to the message of Jesus

we’re convinced that the Jesus you follow can tell the world exactly where you stand

and we don’t walk toward the dying – we RUN.

Downloads can be found at www.crossroads.net, click “Downloads”.  You can also subscribe to the free podcast on iTunes.

i love my kitty’s expression in this picture.

it's like she's sayin "whatever".

people i respect have been causing me to re-think how and why we use certain words.  (see previous post about agnosticism, for instance.  when someone says “agnostic” today, it’s not it’s original meaning.)

i’ve wondered since i was a kid why some words were “bad” and some weren’t.  take “shit” for instance.  who decided “shit” would be the “bad word”, and “shoot” would be okay?  and why in the world do i have to adhere to that?  a word is a word.  just because you say it doesn’t make it bad.  i can tell someone “you’re the shit!” and that’s quite a compliment.  if i say “you look like shit”, well, that’s not.  it’s quite often about context.  either way, i’ve always wondered how words become “bad” or “good”, and who gets to decide that.

another word that is often used incorrectly or out of context is the word “vulgar”.  this was brought to my mind upon reading an article that a friend posted on twitter called “vulgar christianity”.  the article itself is very interesting, as well as the comments.

take a read…

http://armstrongcircus.com/blog/826/

David Dark tends to write what I think and don’t know how to say.  Which is okay because he’s much smarter than I am and he’s a literary genius and scholar.  And a believer.

I’ve tried to figure out how to explain myself.  I’m a believer.  A Christ-follower.  I believe in God, and in his power to change lives.  I also admit that I don’t know everything and CAN’T know everything.  That’s the very essence of faith.  My faith and agnosticism go hand in hand.  If I think I can know – that I can “get God”, understand him, know for SURE anything – than I don’t need faith.  At that point it becomes science.

I should say here that my faith is stronger since accepting that I can’t know, admitting I have doubts and questions about our practice of our faith, etc, than I ever did beforehand.

I should also mention that I’m referring to agnostic in the original sense of the word.  The root word meaning “knowledge” and the “a-” meaning “without”.  In our current culture people lump agnostics with athiests and they are in no way the same.  (Check out wikipedia for various types of both, and read the history of the word online.  What it means today is very skewed from its roots.)

Check out the article.  Quite interesting.

http://www.mygazines.com/issue/1243/37

This is something that I’ve thought often about.  What the heck is the difference anyway?  My title is a “manager”, but when people have told me they see me more as a leader than a manager, I take that as a compliment – not really even knowing why.

So I googled the darned thing.  According to one article: things are managed – people are led.

Ah.  Well, clears that right up!

I’ve always led/managed from the standpoint of “leading by example” – perhaps results take a bit longer, but when we get them – BOY do we get them, because people are more on board and committed and they see I am, too.  I like the above definition: I DO manage my P&L, my inventory, my schedule, my orders, etc.  But lately, I’m feeling as if I’m supposed to manage my people, too.  Perhaps this comes from the top down, as things like this usually do.  I’m not at a place anymore where I feel like I’m being LED.  Where I feel like I’m following a leader who is there to aid and support me when necessary, but will allow me to make and learn from mistakes, stumble a bit, not chew me the heck out, encourage me when I do well, etc.

No, I – a PERSON – am being managed like I’m a task.  There’s not a decision in my job that I actually make right now.  I’m told who I can and can’t hire, what I can and can’t order, how and what to display and merchandise where.  I’m a pawn to whatever the manager above me thinks needs to be done.  However, when it fails or doesn’t work, I’m supposed to somehow be accountable to that and explain what went wrong.

This is stifling.  I believe I’m a damned good manager, and have had some damned fine training and leadership (thank you KL, JJDW, and SR for your example!).  When I’m actually allowed to do my job, things get done, and they get done to standard.  Employees have the resources they need.  The store is set up well.  Staffed well.  And you know what?  Whether we’re making sales targets or not, the store is profitable.  Why?  Because I know how to manage the things that need managed, and lead the team to do the right thing.  And it’s like good karma.  You do the right thing, and the right thing happens.  Weird, huh?

As it is now, I’ve begun to deflect, telling my employees, “This is coming from above my head, and I may not understand it but we need to execute it flawlessly”.  Because if nothing else we’re going to do things as good as they can be done.  (Well, if I ever have time to lead them down that road.)  Most of the time I’m managing my store to the district’s lowest common denominator, having to make decisions to make up for poor managers of the past who screwed things up for all of us and weren’t held accountable for their actions until it was too late, if at all.

One day, I hope to be able to lead people, and manage just the tasks.  And also, I myself want to be led, not managed.  Some people use these words interchangeably.  I think that’s drastically incorrect.  If you’ve ever experienced both, you know they’re definitely not the same.  Below is a random article Google found for me.  I thought it had some good points.

Manage vs. Lead

Posted using ShareThis

Reread through some previous posts.  Found this one from April 2008:

We’re now realizing that what we’ve been doing has been perfect for the time we’ve been doing it, but the things that we want to do with the next several years of our life – well, work interferes with it. Be it scheduling, the physicality of it, logistics, etc. The things we care about – our church community, each other, friends and family, and eventually our own family – are all things we have to say “no” to, or at least put off more than we should, in order to “do our job”.

I was talking to someone at my church about this tonight, and he said something simple and profound, something about a time in life where you realize work has to revolve around your life, not your life around your work.

Wow. Afterwards, I thought, “yeah. so?” because it DID seem so simple. And the more I thought of it the more I got it. As we get older, our priorities shift, our goals change – or perhaps they don’t change so much as mold into something different than we thought they were. When we were in our 20s, it was all about being happy at work, making money, finding out who we were. We didn’t care that our scheduling was, essentially, shit, because we still saw each other at home, at least enough (at least we thought that then). We moved to a different city a few years ago after he got laid off and didn’t have many friends so we didn’t realize we weren’t seeing them. We were church-hopping so we didn’t have community. And we were far from being ready to have kids.

All that has changed in the past year. We chose a community to live in, bought a house, have decided what church community to invest in, have made several friends, have a small group, and are wanting kids. We’re in a VERY different place than a few years ago.

I wonder sometimes why we don’t listen to ourselves, our community, our friends, our mentors in the first place.

That second paragraph is where it’s at.  Thanks, SM.  This is why we consider you a spiritual mentor, is because of simple, profound things like that.

I resolve to do better about sharing my thoughts rather than bottling them all up.

I resolve to be as authentically myself as possible, to be genuine and honest.

I resolve to care how God sees me, as valuable because I’m His creation and His daughter, and not through a cultural lens of how I do submitting to an arbitrary list of do’s and don’t’s that God doesn’t talk about.

I resolve to not give a shit what other people think.

Further, I resolve to not pay heed to people who may think I’ve “gone astray” or done something horribly wrong because I said “shit” instead of “shoot”, because honestly, what’s the difference?

I also resolve to be respectful of people whose opinions may differ than mine, and not say words like “shit” or drink alcohol or talk about “Family Guy” in their presence.

I resolve to listen to music and read books that challenge my creativity and make me think.

I resolve to be more thankful for what I have, keeping in mind how freaking lucky I am.

I resolve to question everything and not blindly accept anything.  Only through this will my faith strengthen.

I resolve to not be spoon-fed doctrine, theology, philosophy, sociology, or any other ideal just because a certain person or position stated it (be they president, preacher, writer, musician, religious leader, journalist, family member, artist).

Also…

I resolve to listen to some music and watch some TV shows purely for their entertainment value, not because I’m establishing my life’s values or viewpoints from them.

I resolve to eat fun foods, say funny things, watch funny things, laugh a lot, and let loose because these things are good for the soul.

I resolve not to think my ways are better than someone else’s just because they’re different, and not to think that my calling is to change them to do things MY way.

I resolve to follow God’s will as best as I know it, which is to love Him and love others.  Beyond that the details are extraneous, unless of course He tells us different.

I resolve to challenge people lovingly to get off their asses and do something for a person in need and BE the Church.  And I resolve to try my best to do the same with more love, compassion, and consistency than in the past.

I resolve to still love you, whether you agree with me on any given thing or not.  Because in the end, it doesn’t matter if we’re all the same, look the same, think the same, act the same, listen/watch the same, sing the same, say the same.  What matters is that we worked out our faith the best way we knew how, and we worked to progress the Kingdom of God in our own way.  (However, I will also resolve to delete your comments or emails if they are unnecessarily mean, disagreeable (please disagree agreeably, and if you don’t know how to do this I’d recommend refraining from saying anything at all), hateful, or offensive.)

These things I resolve.  And I will most certainly fail.

I need an outlet, so hopefully I’ll do better about this blogging thing.  If no one reads it, I don’t care.  I’ll have my outlet.

Feel free to plug in, if you wish.  Apparently you can “bookmark” these sites nowadays.

i just saw a commercial for www.alpacainfo.com.  a lady was talking about it as if she had just saved the world.  like the next big thing is to start your own alpaca farm and be rich and happy and fulfilled.

maybe i’m not one to judge what people think, but that just sounds crazy.